


Game Theory

by doomcanary



Series: The Pegasus Way [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Polyamory, Transsexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:39:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1347763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's with Evan, Radek's with Rodney, and now John's kind of with Rodney too. But the Atlantis expedition still has one foot in the MIlky Way, and things get real when John and Evan's relationship comes to light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been sitting on my hard drive since 2007 or so, and is the penultimate instalment of this series. I can remember how I wanted the whole thing to end and I'd like to finally finish writing it, for some personal reasons I'll tell you more about when (not if!) I post the final part. If you're enjoying it *please* leave a comment, nothing keeps me writing like people wanting more!

 "Evan, what's going on?" says John, when they're back in his quarters.

Evan looks at John, wearing a half-fastened shirt, hair dishevelled and mouth still swollen, recently kissed. She looks like every fantasy of her Evan's had. But he's not looking for a fantasy now, he's looking for something else, and he can't see it at all. He closes his eyes, and rubs his forehead with a hand.

"John," he says, "could you put a shirt on, please? I mean, an ordinary one."

There's a moment's silence, but then he hears John go over to the closet, and the rustle of cloth.

"Better?" asks John. When Evan looks up, she's got a well-worn black issue T-shirt on.

"Much. Sir." says Lorne.

"Oh," says John, her face going grim.

"Yeah. Oh. You need to hear this."

 

At 0600 the next morning, Sergeant Chavez and four armed guards bring last night's offenders up to the Atlantis parade ground at double time; a column of green fatigues against bronze Ancient alloy and blue-grey morning sea. Lorne and Sheppard are waiting for them there, and when Chavez reports, John walks down the line slowly, eyeballing each and every man. Most of them are glassy-eyed with a mix of military discipline and fear; Stanislasky looks grey, and John knows full well he only got out of Carson's care the day before. He strolls leisurely back to where Lorne and Chavez are, and turns to face the line.

"Private Stanislasky, two paces forward," he orders. The man does his best to give it some snap, but he's obviously not fit for cleaning toilets, let alone parade.

"You still on medication, marine?" asks Sheppard.

"Sir, yes sir!"

"You throw the first punch last night?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Report to the infirmary, and don't show your face in the Smurf again this month. Fall out."

Stanislasky salutes and walks exhaustedly away, relief writ large on his face.

"Everyone else, get down and give me two hundred," he says. They drop like stones, and he turns to Chavez.

"Physical jerks for as long as it takes, Sergeant," he says. "And bring them to my office one man at a time."

An hour later, his faith in human nature and the integrity of his base is pretty much dust, and he's facing Corporal Gibson across his desk. One of his best men, and loyal to a fault.

"A perfect service record and you're pulled up for brawling in a bar. You have any idea how much shit you're in, Corporal?" he asks.

"Sir, yes sir!"

"You want to lose your stripes over this?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Then how about you tell me what happened in there," says John, leaning back and folding his arms. "Permission to speak freely is granted."

 

Lorne is out on the parade ground in a thin drizzle, directing NCOs as they split the offenders up into squads and haul them off for more inventive and appropriate forms of torture at Sheppard's behest. Chavez comes up and salutes.

"Colonel Sheppard would like to speak with you, sir," he says.

"Carry on, Sergeant," says Lorne, returns the salute and turns away.

Walking into John's office is like walking back in time. John hardly uses it, except for disciplinary and formal stuff. Evan himself hasn't been in here for months. John is lounging behind the desk, watching him with calm authority, and Evan feels something twist, low down in his guts.

"At ease, Major," says John.

Uncertainty makes Evan out of place in his own skin, and he fights the urge to fold his arms and mimic Sheppard's trademark slouch. Parade rest is good enough for any airman.

"You made a good call last night," says John. "Can't say I'm happy about you shooting my city up, but you stopped a fight and uncovered a problem."

"Thank you, sir," says Lorne.

"Trouble is, I looked at the duty rosters I signed off on when the rookies came in," she says. "Not enough contact with Atlantis personnel. They need rewriting from the bottom up. If we don't split them up and force them to blend in, we'll have two separate factions on our hands."

Evan knows John's right; and it's an incredible command decision on a base like Atlantis for this not to have happened right there at the start.

"I looked at the date on those orders, too," John goes on. "June fourth, three weeks after I got changed."

And the morning after John first slept with him.

John gets up, and comes round the desk. She leans on it, and folds her arms again.

"Evan," she says quietly, "this just got real."

Evan feels – he doesn't know what he feels. Terrified. Proud. Amazed that John's just _got_ this, instantly, without him saying a word about abandoned radios. Like someone just switched the world for a different one.

"This is why you don't screw people under your command," says John. "Takes your mind off the job."

"Leadership holds a base together, sir," says Evan, and god but that 'sir' feels wrong. "This is Pegasus; there is no S.O.P. for dealing with a CO who just got sex-changed by Ancient tech. Heightmeyer wasn't reaching you, and I was not about to watch Atlantis fall apart."

"So how exactly would you describe what's happening now?" John says.

Evan's world gets switched out all over again. John is the ranking officer on this base. John is shallower than a puddle and easy as tic-tac-toe. John is his CO, a career officer with a bone-deep feel for leadership. It's a quality Evan can't help but respect; it's what Sheppard had, before he -

It's a quality that Colonel Sheppard _has_. Nothing happened to him at all.

There is no difference whatsoever between the CO he knew and the woman who's looking levelly at him now.

Oh God. What the hell has he done.

"Sir, it was not you who made that call," he says, holding his voice down hard. "I made it, and I did it for the sake of this command. I still can't see what I could have done differently."

Something unreadable passes through John's eyes; in the low morning light they look alien, like a cat's.

"Then you've done your duty very well," she says. Evan can't tell whether he's looking at his lover, or Atlantis's CO.

"John-" begins Lorne.

"You're dismissed, Major Lorne. Get out."


	2. Chapter 2

**From:** shep@freemail.atl

 **To:** phd3@freemail.atl

 **Subject:** Rain check

We're going to have to put our next trip off, indefinitely. There's military stuff I need to handle first. I'm sorry.

John

 

 **From:** phd3@freemail.atl

 **To:** shep@freemail.atl

 **Subject:** RE: Rain check

Oh that's just great, Colonel Cocktease. Thank you so much for playing me like a fiddle and then dropping me on my ass. You can forget our "next trip" completely.

 

 **From:** phd3@freemail.atl

 **To:** shep@freemail.atl

 **Subject:** I take that back

Sorry. Sorry. Crap. My bad. Radek nearly killed me for sending that. I'm guessing this is big. Take care; you know where your science staff are if you need support.

R&R

 

 **From:** shep@freemail.atl

 **To:** phd3@freemail.atl

 **Subject:** RE: I take that back 

You're an ass, Rodney. I'll let you know when I have free time again. 0730 start on Tuesday, don't forget.

J

 

 

It's three days since the fight, and John is standing in his quarters, in BDUs and a sports bra, putting away his laundry. T-shirts, panties, the small collection of extra bras. His boots live in the bottom of the closet when they're not on his feet; he moves to pick them up, and realises they're sitting on top of something.

It's the auburn-coloured top he was wearing the night of the fight; the laces are still loose, dangling aimlessly. Without really knowing why, he folds it together and holds it up to his face, breathing in; he catches the faint scent of brownies, his own soap, and something else. It's smooth and cool against his skin; beautiful, sensual, like he was when he wore it. He threw it in here when Evan asked him to change. He'd balled it up, angry for a reason he couldn't explain, but the fabric had refused to play along; it had unfolded in the air, flowing like liquid and spilling onto the floor.

He takes out a coat-hanger, and hangs up the top; shakes it out, rethreads the laces, ties them neatly. Then he slides it into the narrow space at the end of the rail, between his dress blues and the wall, and it vanishes. He takes a T-shirt t random and puts it on; he has discipline to run, down in the guts of the southwest pier where the hallways flooded before Atlantis rose.

Corporal Jenning, in the end, had proved to be the bad apple that had set the whole thing off; he's not by any means the only one getting a cocktail of EMI and office hours, but John has taken the man on himself, backed up by Chavez and as many spare grunts as he needs. On the whole he thinks that it's a question of adjustment; Jenning's not a bad soldier, he's just freaking out, and once he's spent a while back down at the bottom of the food chain, John thinks he'll come through just fine. Some men just need to know that there are rules and order and someone in charge. He heads out for the transporter, for his daily inspection tour.

 

Three days down, one to go; Jantz, Bell and Gibson have a few more office hours left before they're free. A disinterested sergeant watches them as they mop and shuffle their way along the long, long hall. They're pretty lucky; they have buckets, and nobody's moving the goal. Gibson had smelled Jenning ten feet away when they'd passed him coming in last night. He could almost feel sorry for the guy.

“Nothin' like a little R&R,” Jantz grumbles under his breath.

“And this ain't nothin' like R&R,” says Bell.

Behind them, the sergeant's boots click as he comes to attention.

“Colonel Sheppard, sir! Marines, ten- _hut_!”

“How's it going, Gibson?” asks Sheppard lazily, strolling up to them with that asshole half-smile.

“Bout as well as can be expected, sir,” says Gibson.

“Anybody kick your bucket over?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Shep looks down at the bucket, looks back at them; watches them, just until they start to sweat. Then the grin flashes wider, and he – she – the Colonel says, “Carry on, men.”

"You know what fucks with me most?" mutters Jantz, wringing out his mop as Sheppard's footsteps clang away down the hall.

"What's that?"

"Every time I look at Shep, half of me feels like I got two assholes now, and half of me wants to get hard."

"That's Pegasus, man." Gibson punctuates his words with the thick, emphatic _splat_ of his mop on the floor.

 

Elizabeth radios, interrupting his inspection tour, and ten minutes later, he's nodding a curt greeting to Lorne as they both arrive outside her office simultaneously. Lorne comes to attention, and lets John through first. John's seen little of him since three mornings ago, but he's been stonily sober every time they have spoken; the usual bubble of charm and humour underneath his soldier's discipline is absent. John finds that reassuring; it tells him Lorne really does get that he's done something deeply – what would Elizabeth say? - _inappropriate_. John didn't pick Lorne for an XO for entertainment value; he's sharp too, and it's clear enough that he understands his job is on thin ice until he's proved he can still respect the chain of command.

“Gentlemen,” says Elizabeth. “Please, sit down.”

John takes a seat, hearing the rustle and creak of Lorne doing the same beside him. The surroundings are familiar; masks on the walls, weird native doodads rubbing shoulders with a stained coffee mug and a photograph of a dog on the desk. Elizabeth folds her hands, and looks at them seriously. John feels a certain wary tingle in his gut.

“I understand there's been a disciplinary problem,” Elizabeth says.

“A brawl in the enlisted bar,” John says. “It's all in hand. I've made adjustments to some of the teams and the duty rosters, and dealt with the men involved personally.”

“May I ask how this came about, John?”

John loathes Elizabeth using his name like that. It's a kick to the guts, tender diplomacy where he wants professionalism. A subtle reminder of his change, too. He presses his (different, full) lips together.

“A batch of reinforcements arrived shortly after my, ah, accident,” he says, gesturing at himself. “There are some difficult characters in the mix, and due to the stress of my personal situation I made a bad call and assigned them in a way that prevented integration. I take full responsibility for that.”

“Major, do you concur?”

Why the hell is she asking Lorne? He's John's subordinate. It's his job to support John.

“Absolutely, ma'am,” says Lorne, like the good (and sane) soldier he is. “Pegasus is Pegasus. I don't believe this could have been foreseen.”

“That much is certainly true,” says Elizabeth. “What concerns me is the wider consequences. Are you aware, Colonel, that there are a number of rumours circulating around the city?”

“I've heard a few of them,” says John. “Zelenka can kill you with the plumbing, there's a mermaid off the south pier, Halling puts that Athosian hash stuff in his hooch. There are usually a few.”

“I mean concerning you.”

“I've heard those too.”

He has; rumour has told him variously that he's a dyke, that he's screwing his way through the Marines, that he's screwing his way through the scientists, and that he's screwing absolutely nobody and is consequently so fucked up he's sadistically taking it out on the men instead. Rumour is full of shit; he puts most of that down to sour grapes and the Marines blowing off steam.

“Then you'll be able to assure me that there's no truth to the claim that you've been distracted recently because you're involved with Major Lorne.”

Inwardly, John freezes. Holy shit. He watches Elizabeth calmly, biting down on panic.

“I am not involved with my XO,” he says. And that's true enough. But Elizabeth isn't watching him; she's looking at Lorne. And Evan – no, the Major - has never been as good at the soldier's poker face as John is. He's too human; it bleeds through.

Lorne clears his throat, and says “I'm certain the Colonel will make someone a wonderful wife.”

John's guts turn to ice. The words are so close to Lorne's usual humour, but the way they come out is empty and bitter. Elizabeth may not know Lorne like John does, but she didn't get where she is by missing cues. Sure enough her eyes swing back to him, assessing; he meets them, rock steady, running a litany of curses through his mind, using his anger. Manipulative bitch, backstabber, two-faced whore. Get your grasping hands out of my life.

“Hearsay can't be trusted,” he says, in a quiet and dangerous tone.

“I'm glad to know that,” says Elizabeth. But there's suspicion in her eyes.

 

John leaves Elizabeth's office and heads straight back to the southwest pier, forcing himself to walk, and not to punch the walls. He has a job to finish. There's been a storm rumbling around the area since dawn, leaving an electric feel in the atmosphere; as he passes along the pier he can almost feel it on his skin, in his hair.

When he gets to the very bottom of the NJP Suite, Chavez is standing over Jenning – Private Jenning, now – as he cleans and dries the corridor floor. He's using a washcloth. The stench of stagnant water is thick, and there's a layer of ocean-bottom ooze on everything.

John walks up to Jenning and looks down at him. The man comes to attention on his knees; it's working. John walks on, round the man, leaving a track of filthy footprints on the clean section of floor; then he leans right down into Jenning's grimy face.

"Six feet," he says. "That's fucking pathetic, soldier."

"Sir," says Jenning, staring rigidly forward past John's hip. John turns away, walks slowly back towards the entrance. Just as he's almost out of conversation range, far enough away that Jenning will be relaxing, he pauses.

"Sergeant Chavez," he says.

"Yes, sir?"

"Piss on it."

John's radio clicks and burbles in his ear, his eternal tormentor, and he turns away. A couple more turns of the screw after this, and Jenning might just about have learned his place. It's a shitty thought; nowhere near what the asshole deserves.

As he reaches up to key his radio, he can hear the splattering sound of Chavez redecorating the floor.

"This is Sheppard," he says.

 

 

“You wanted to see me, Doc?” asks Evan, as Zelenka looks up from the chessboard. The door to Zelenka's quarters had been open, and Radek is staring at a half-finished game.

“Come,” he says, and picks up a rough pottery flask from the floor. “Rodney is in the labs, and I do not want to drink alone.”

They head for one of the balconies, a quieter spot than most, and settle in. It's not Halling's stuff, whatever it is – Evan suspects one of the city's stills, since it kicks like a Genii shotgun and has a weird, chemical aftertaste.

“I hope the Colonel is coping well,” says Zelenka after a while of contemplative silence. “Rodney was most disappointed to be dropped.”

Something unknots in Evan's chest at that; he hadn't known. John could have been thorough about this, screwed him over properly to drive the point home. He's not, and that's worth something, surely.

“How are things for you and the Colonel now?” asks Zelenka.

He glances at Radek and finds pale blue eyes studying him, searching his face; he keeps his expression neutral, as far as he can. He looks down, and finds that what he thought was open space inside him is shrinking away, anger bleeding into it from below; there are ways and ways of screwing with someone. He deserved to know John wasn't sticking with Rodney; John has to have known what message it would send, to leave him out of the loop like that. You don't matter, Evan, you're just a grunt now. He looks up at Zelenka again.

“Everything's just fine, Doc,” he says.

The guy just carries on watching him, and he gets that feeling again like Radek is looking right through him, like he can see every half-truth Evan's ever told.

“So be it,” says Radek, and Evan knows he's not fooling anyone. It takes him a moment even to look away from Zelenka; he's silent for a while before getting to his feet.

“I have to be on duty in an hour,” he says. “Thanks for the drink.”

He leaves Zelenka looking out at the sunset, cool eyes watching the blazing, falling sun.

 

 

“At ease, Major,” says John, hardly glancing up.

“What can I do for you, sir?” says Lorne.

“You're aware that Private Jenning has requested reassignment to Earth?”

“Yes, sir, the paperwork came through me. He's in Cadman's unit.”

“I want you to talk to him,” she says. “Find out what he's thinking. Try to talk him out of the reassignment.”

Evan blinks. “May I ask why, sir?” he says. He'd have thought John would be only too keen to be rid of an oxygen thief like that.

John looks up at Lorne squarely. “Because I don't give up on a man,” she says. Her voice softens introspectively as she adds “Maybe I was too hard on him; maybe it's time to try a different tack.”

Evan feels his stomach flip. John's been so distant, so detached; and now – was that for him? It makes him cold all over, the sheer enormousness of the possibility that that was John talking to him in code.

“Maybe so, sir,” he says. He looks at her intently, willing her to understand. Something flickers in her face; the door to the world he had before cracks open, just an inch.

 

Evan's looking at John strangely, like he's waiting for something; John finds himself staring, just for a second. But that way lies – nothing he wants. Nothing he can have. That way lies the twisted-up mush of wrongness that was his life, and isn't any more. He pulls himself together, and irritation takes the place of – whatever it was. Lorne is usually quicker on the uptake than this; he shouldn't have to nursemaid his own XO.

“We can't let Jenning leave, Major,” he says. “It would be playing right into Caldwell's hands. He's been gunning for my job since he was assigned to the Daedalus. I can't have this command looking slipshod in front of the SGC and the IOA; it just strengthens his position.”

It's true; in a long-term, low priority sense. Unit cohesion and morale on Atlantis are by far more important than Caldwell's petty manoeuvres. But Lorne seems to accept it; he looks away, and nods. Whatever the weird look on his face was, it's gone, thank god.

“I'll do my best, sir,” he says.

John picks up a stack of paperwork and doesn't even watch Lorne leave. It doesn't help, and he radios Cadman instead to ream her out for three missing forms.

 

On Evan's first posting, he'd been absolutely terrified by the sheer amount of respect the airmen had for his word. Anyone his age or younger had looked to him as someone who really knew his stuff; someone who could answer questions, give advice, give orders, know best. They'd seen him as a leader. Even men who'd been doing their jobs longer than he'd been alive waited for him to give the go-ahead. The Marines aren't quite the same - they think officers in general are barely more self-sufficient than five-year-old kids, and zoomie officers seem to rank one step above newborns - but action cures most misapprehensions in the average grunt's mind, and they take him seriously enough now that he can pick up the leader persona when he needs to.

Which doesn't explain why he's propped against the wall two corridors away from Jenning's shared quarters, with his hands over his face.

It's John, he knows. The cold that isn't really cold, down in his guts, tells him that. That spiel about Caldwell rang as sour as a broken bell; even if Caldwell had somehow managed to horn in on the selection procedure for Atlantis personnel and even if he had deliberately sent them troublemakers, there's a war going on in this galaxy, and John should not be worried about looking good back home. John isn't the kind of person who _cares_ about that. He hates what he saw so much it makes him nauseous.

The thing is it can't be a win. Either John is paranoid, or John was lying to him.

Evan feels the realisation crawling down his spine like ice-water leaking out of a tap. He's shaking; he pushes himself off the wall as if to go somewhere, then turns round and punches it. But the flood of understanding won't slow down.

John dragged him in for a job Cadman could have handled; stared at him with unmistakable pain in her eyes; then turned round and kicked him in the teeth. John's lying to him; him personally. She made an excuse to talk to him, then fucked with him instead.

John had been one of the best COs Evan had ever served under; maverick, brilliant and born to the job. Being a part of John's command had put both fire and the fear of God into Evan; made him love his job more than he'd ever known he could. His whole chest aches with the memory of being right there in the heart of Atlantis's breathtaking victories and incredible feats; even the losses, the impossible odds, couldn't extinguish that wild sense of hope.

But this; this isn't John. This isn't even an officer.

The killer is, Evan knows that if he was Cadman, if he was Chavez or Harper or Bellini or any of the others, it would be fine. Everyone else gets John as she's meant to be. It's him.

Evan had thought, that day in John's office, that someone had switched out the world; pulled it out from under his feet and shoved a different one in, while he was still falling. Now, he knows for certain that the world is entirely gone. He looks at the corridor, and it's like he's seeing it through a distorting lens; it seems to swim upwards into curves, out of perspective, wrong. And yet at the same time it's there, impassive beneath his feet. He knows what to do, where to go, who to be; and he steps away from the wall, straightening his uniform.

 

John is still doing paperwork when the radio call comes in. He's been staring at the same sheet for half an hour.

“Control tower to Colonel Sheppard, come in please.”

"This is Sheppard," John says.

"Major Lorne has gone AWOL, sir," says Cadman's voice in his ear. "And we're missing Jumper One."

 


	3. Chapter 3

John arrives at the transporter at a dead run, but walks into the control tower like it's just a briefing. Cadman, Rodney and Elizabeth are already there; someone has had the good sense to clear the technicians out. Ronon and Teyla are nowhere to be seen. Outside the windows, the sky is still grey and the cloudbase low.

"So, kids, who wants to tell me what's going on?" he drawls.

"Found out about a minute before I radioed you, sir," says Cadman. "Major Lorne didn't report for the mission briefing, and his radio's off the grid. No life signs in the city that don't match up to a headset."

Rodney holds up two cables – no, one cable, cut in the middle.

"He disabled the iris sensors to the jumper bay," he says.

"We got the jumper on external sensors?"

"We think he's using the cloak," says Elizabeth. "John -"

"Priority one is recovering the Major," says John sharply. "There'll be plenty of time for explanations after that."

Elizabeth won't be fobbed off. "Am I to take it that you know what's going on?" she says, folding her arms and giving him a stony look.

"I can't be certain," says John evasively.

"I will expect a _full_ report, Colonel."

"And you will have it, Elizabeth," says John, frustration tightening his voice, "but right now I need to find Major Lorne. He is a member of my command staff and as such he represents intel that could be extremely valuable to our many enemies. Furthermore, he is on the run, which clearly indicates he is under extreme stress. Atlantis cannot risk the consequences of the decisions a man in that position could make."

“And you believe that you are the right person to retrieve him.”

“You will have your report as soon as the Major has been recovered, _ma'am_.”

"Very well," says Elizabeth, coldly. "Carry on."

"Rodney. Do we have any way of detecting a jumper when it's cloaked?"

Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yes," he says. "Of course. A cloaking device has so much in common with a locator beacon, after all."

"Not helping, McKay."

"Well, maybe you could – no, that won't work. Long range, no, there's nothing, but there are faint energy traces you can pick up if you get close."

"How close?"

"Within oh, fifty meters?"

"What about the transponder?"

"Cloaking automatically turns the jumper transponders off," says Rodney. "They don't come back online until they receive a signal from the jumper's main relay telling them the cloak's gone down."

"So we'll pick him up when he uncloaks to go through a Gate."

Rodney looks upset. "Unless the pilot tells them to stay off, of course."

Crap. John sets his jaw and frowns. Time for plan B.

"Get me the locations of the closest stargates to the city, and whatever information we've got about the planets they're on. Meet me in the jumper bay. And get Zelenka up here, I want someone on the ground."

"What? But -"

"Don't argue, McKay," John snaps, already heading for the door.

As he tears through a pre-flight check in Jumper Four, John's mind is working overtime, tracking a hundred different strategies and plans. Lorne has the same training John has himself; he has to be going for untraceability, and that means as many gates as he can get through, covering his tracks. McKay can get a gate to give you the last few addresses it's dialled out, but that takes precious time. He either has to catch Lorne on the way, or be sure he's picked the right gate to hotwire first.

"Iris is opening," says Zelenka's voice through his radio. A shaft of light opens up in the centre of the bay, illuminating a swirl of rain; thick drops enclose the light like a curtain, falling from the edges of the airlock above. Through the viewscreen he sees Rodney come barreling in, his ever-present datapad in hand.

"Hurry up, McKay," he snaps as Rodney runs in, shaking water from his hair.

"I can't go any faster!"

Jumper Four's hatch clangs shut, and John is urging her off the ground even as Rodney falls into the copilot's seat.

"How many gates, Rodney?" he says, as the autopilot slides them through the hatch.

"Two. One in orbit, one planetside. The orbital gate is closer than the other one; it's a little over four hours' flight away. The planetside gate is more like five, but in the opposite direction, give or take."

The sky outside the viewscreen is darkening as the jumper climbs near vertically away from Lantea.

"We'll head for the planetside gate," he says.

"What, for the hell of it?" says McKay.

"Because ditching something as recognisable as a jumper is a good idea if you don't want to be found," says John. He keys his radio. "Zelenka, come in."

"Go ahead, Colonel."

"Can you get the control systems to tell you anything at all about what time exactly Major Lorne got away?"

There's a pause.

"Yes. But it will take time. Please wait. Zelenka out."

John falls silent, frowning at the console. Something's bugging him, something he needs to know to properly assess what's going on.

Jumper One; he doesn't know why Lorne took Jumper One. She's not his bird. He's a pilot and Lorne's a pilot, and it doesn't make any sense; loving your bird is in your blood. She becomes a part of you, a piece of your soul made of metal and weapons and wires. You fall in love with her a little, once she's brought you back out of hell a few times; you slowly learn to trust that she'll do it again. But One isn't Lorne's; that's Six. One is John's; the one who lit up for him when he first came to Atlantis. She's been with him ever since, and he doesn't get why she's the one Lorne took. Maybe it's some kind of payback; maybe they'll find his jumper a smoking wreck in front of the planetside gate. John feels a black sense of emptiness at the thought of it.

"Colonel Sheppard," says Zelenka's voice again.

"Go ahead."

"Major Lorne left the jumper bay approximately three hours ago, under the jumper's cloak."

"Crap," says John, as the stars come out in the airless sky. He pushes the jumper hard, already at top speed and hoping uselessly for more.

"Crap?" says McKay. "What do you mean, crap? Oh my god – we've taken a broken jumper into space. We're about to die of explosive decompression, aren't we?"

"Shut _up_ , McKay."

"Shut up, don't tell me to shut up, you can't just say 'crap' and expect me to sit there like one of your grunts, I have a mind the size of a planet, what am I supposed to do, reach into your ridiculous furry head and pull out a list of information about when I'm most likely to _die_?"

"We're not gonna die, Rodney."

"Oh my god."

"Will you stop that?"

"No! Nonono! I know how to track Jumper One!" Rodney comes out of his seat like he's been ejected, and runs into the passenger compartment; John turns round in his seat, completely lost, and sees a metal panel fly across the hold. He gets up to slouch in the bulkhead door, feeling his stress level sliding through the roof of the compartment.

"Rodney," he says, in his laziest drawl, the one he uses when he's just about to start shooting people, "you wanna tell me what you're doing to the jumper? You know, the thing that's keeping the nasty hard vacuum away from your delicate flesh?"

"It's perfectly safe!" says Rodney, head and shoulders inside the cavity under one of the seats. His arm appears, drops a crystal circuit board on the deck beside him, and vanishes again.

"Okay, but what are you _doing_ to her?"

"Reconfiguring the transponder to broadcast on a control frequency – and -" another crystal drops to the metal floor - "amplifying it using the Ancient comms system so that we can power it up far enough to reach the planetside gate. If you happen to know – which, naturally, I do – what the exact frequency cycle of the jumper's cloak is, you can punch through it for about a half second at a time – which is just enough to activate the transponder remotely. We can pull a location right out of the jumper's head. We need to be in comms range of the city for this to work, are we?"

"We just left it," says John.

Jumper Four doesn't slow her ascent at all; she flips end over end and powers straight back down the plane she's just been working so hard to climb. The inertial dampeners soak it up; John feels nothing, though he knows the stars are wheeling outside. Rodney's head pops out of the panel again.

"What are you waiting for?" he says. "Get us back."

"We're moving, Rodney." John steps aside and gives him a view of the screen, where blue Lantea is slowly eclipsing the stars.

"What are we, on autopilot?"

"No," says John.

"Do you have the slightest idea how creepy it is when you do that? Go sit in the chair, woman, at least make it look like you're flying the thing for real."

Five minutes later Rodney is sitting in a cat's cradle of cables, crystals and miscellaneous tech, punching something into his datapad.

"And... I'm done," he says. "Are we in range?"

"Yes, McKay."

"Activating broadcast in; three, two, one..." He hits a key.

"Rodney, what are you doing?" says Zelenka's angry voice over the radio. "Control room has just gone mad."

"Using the city's long-range sensors to broadcast a transponder control code," Rodney replies. "Don't worry, it'll be over in – oh, now, in fact."

" _K sakru_!" says Radek in surprise, at the same moment the HUD flashes up and John says "What the fuck?"

"What? What?" says Rodney, frantically disentangling himself from his basketwork of wires. On the HUD, a blue globe drawn out of crisscrossing lines rotates; a miniature Atlantis becomes a dot on the horizon, and beside the ragged edge of a continent of land a red and yellow dot pulses like a heart.

"She's right here on Lantea," says John.

 

John cloaks Jumper Four and puts her down about half a klick from Jumper One's position. The weather is filthier yet, the same storm that's been circling Atlantis all day blowing in over the coastline and lashing the viewscreen with rain. He suits up, zipping on his tac vest – still doesn't fit right over his tits - and taking a pair of night-vision goggles too. Rodney moves as if to come with him, and John holds up a hand.

"You can't go alone!" says Rodney.

"I need you here in case I don't come back," he says. "I'll check in by radio every half hour; if I miss one, take the jumper back to Atlantis and call in the Marines."

Rodney gives him a stricken look.

"Come back, then," he says.

John stops, just for a moment, remembering chocolate kisses and warm, generous hands; remembers the last time he felt like a woman, instead of just looking like one. How good that was.

"I'll do what I can," he says.

He's turning to go when Rodney adds softly, "You broke up with him, didn't you? That's what this is about."

"I don't know what it's about and I can't assume," says John. But his eyes linger on Rodney's face a moment too long, and he knows the guilt John-the-woman feels has shown, because Rodney's crooked mouth sets into a sad little line.

"Okay," he says.

John the soldier slips out into the rainy night, P90 in his hand.

When he comes over the crest of a little rise in the land, conveniently concealing Jumper Four, he sees a break in the treeline not far below, green in the night-vision scopes. He heads down, hits the deck a little way inside the trees, and crawls to a vantage point.

Jumper One is in a clearing, pine trees swaying behind it, not even cloaked. All that crap with the city sensors, and they could have just kicked the transponder from the ground. The rear hatch is angled away from him, but the front port is lit up and a white flare in the goggles tells him the hatch is down, lighting the treeline behind. There's no sign of Lorne. Cautiously, John pulls himself up to a crouch and dodges through the trees, circling the cylindrical craft, avoiding the pools of light it throws. As he comes round the rear and opens up the section of the clearing that had been concealed, he sees Lorne, and freezes.

He's leaning against a tree, looking at Jumper One; staring at her hopelessly, like she's his best buddy and he's just watched her get shot. He's unarmed; no vest, no P90, not even a sidearm. John pushes up the night scope and glances into the jumper's open hatch. A black something is lying on the seat, and Lorne's P90 is propped on the deck below.

Lorne's not on the edge. He went over that when he ran. John's looking at the place where he hit the ground.

John stands up, unclips the P90, and walks slowly forward, holding hands and weapon out wide. Lorne startles at the movement as John comes into the light from the jumper's open hatch, but he doesn't drop; just looks at John, his face pale in the dark. John bends and sets the P90 down, then unholsters his sidearm and drops that beside it too. The tac vest follows, because John the soldier feels wrong somehow, out of place. Slowly, he walks over to where Lorne stands, and when he gets there, he isn't sure who he is any more.

"I couldn't do it," says Lorne. "I couldn't run." His voice is dead, emotionless.

John stands beside Lorne, to look at the jumper where she sits on the sodden ground. They stand in silence for a while.

"Why Jumper One?"

"She's your bird, John," says Lorne, in that same terrifying, quiet voice. "I wanted – I just wanted to -"

And John gets it, the way you get a bullet in your leg. Jumper One is John's bird; the one he trusts, the one he cares about. Jumper One is all Lorne had left of John. He loves John – loves _her_ – and she took that from him.

John Sheppard may not know who he is any more, but John Sheppard knows who she is just fine. She's a soldier, the CO of Atlantis, and a woman someone loves.

She thinks maybe she's a woman who loves someone, too.

"Evan," she says, and reaches blindly for his hand. He takes it.

“I'm sorry, John,” he says. “Letting Elizabeth get to me like that – if I'd been stronger she wouldn't know.”

“Evan, fuck,” she says, turning towards him, and he's turning too as she pulls on his hand; they collide half way in a messy, rain-wet embrace. Lorne is soaked to the skin, but he's warm, warm like a fever, and she holds him so tight.

"This is Pegasus, Evan," she says. "There's got to be another way. We'll find a way. I'm not – I can't do this any more. I'm not him."

Lorne drops his head onto her shoulder, like he has nothing left to give; and from the crumpled heap of tac vest by the jumper's ramp, John hears the scratchy voice of her radio.

"Sheppard, come in. This is McKay. Come in, John."

Lorne gives a wrung-out little laugh that she feels instead of sees, and lets her go; she stumbles over to the vest, and grabs the set.  
"I'm good, McKay," she says. "Lorne's here, and he's OK."

 

When they get back to the jumper bay, Elizabeth is waiting for them, arms folded, radio a black spike on her cheek. She watches as Jumper Four settles unsteadily, Rodney's face rather pale in the viewport, and takes in John, arm slung around Evan as they leave Jumper One.

“Are you hurt, Major?” she asks.

“No, ma'am, just very, very tired,” says Evan, and there's an honesty in his voice John hasn't heard since the Smurf brawl.

“Then get some rest,” she says. “John, if you wouldn't mind -”

John pulls herself up; Evan, sensing the movement, finds his own balance.

“Elizabeth,” she says, “I'm afraid Major Lorne needs to be present for this debriefing.”

 

They're on the balcony, walking past the repopulated control room towards Elizabeth's office again, with the whole world teetering on a knife-edge underneath them, when the unmistakable sound of transporters hums in the air and the room lights up in white. John whips round to see Caldwell and a dozen armed Marines standing in the gate room – and among them, the sandy head of Private Jenning.

“Colonel Caldwell,” says Elizabeth, striding to the top of the gate room steps and striking a pose, as if she's bulletproof. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Doctor Weir, I am here to relieve Colonel Sheppard of duty and take command of the Atlantis military expedition. I have reason to believe there has been a serious breach of fraternisation regulations.”

On the balcony, John looks at Evan, and Evan looks at John. John lifts her hand to Evan's face, leans in to him and gives him a slow, searing kiss; then she turns, and walks past the control room – a fishtank full of startled faces – past Elizabeth, and down the steps to Caldwell.

“I take full responsibility for my actions, Colonel,” she says. Evan grips the balcony rail like he's going to pass out, and prays.

 


End file.
